Category Archives: Research

So here we are, almost a week after the election here in Colorado that got a lot of big people’s attention. Prop 103’s “for the kids” tax hike went down in a ball of flames. A record number of local school tax and debt elections ran headlong into defeat. In at least one case, “negative perceptions” of a school district’s level of financial transparency has been credited with bringing down a mill levy override proposal. If that’s the case, then the timing couldn’t be better for the release of my Education Policy Center friends’ new issue paper Time to Show the Money: Complying with Colorado’s Public School Financial Transparency Act. Research associate Devan Crean was the lead author, and senior policy analyst Ben DeGrow was the co-author. In 2010 our state legislature passed HB 1036, a bipartisan measure requiring local K-12 agencies to post budgets, financial audits, financial statements, salary schedules, and as of July 2011, expenditures in the form of check registers and purchase card statements. So how well are they doing?:

In the past couple years some national critics have made a living off distorting the findings of a major national study on public charter schools. If someone has a knee-jerk reaction against charter schools, it’s not surprising they would run with part of the findings that seem to support their conclusion and make sweeping generalizations that don’t stand up so well under the light of scrutiny. Onto the scene this month comes the most comprehensive analysis of studies on public charter school impacts on student achievement. The Effect of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature, created by Julian Betts and Y. Emily Tang for the Center on Reinventing Public Education, reminds us that the big picture is more nuanced (and positive) than some cranky critics would like us to believe. As quoted in the accompanying press release: Despite considerable variation among charter schools, there is ample evidence that charter elementary schools on average outperform traditional public schools in both reading and math, and that charter middle schools outperform in math. Elsewhere in the report it is noted:

A few weeks ago I told you how I colored all over the “Blue Book” explaining the arguments for and against the Proposition 103 “it’s for the kids” tax hike. While that was plenty of fun, I don’t think it compares to what my Independence Institute friends got to do yesterday with Prop 103:

Yesterday Denver-based and national researchers released the big evaluation of Denver’s ProComp teacher incentive pay program, often considered the centerpiece of an array of structural reforms in Colorado’s second largest school district. If you want the soundbite summary of the work by the University of Colorado Denver and the Center for Education Data and Research, Ed News Colorado’s report nearly nails it: Student achievement is up and teacher turnover is down since Denver Public Schools implemented its merit pay plan for teachers in 2006, but it’s tough to prove a direct link between the two. In other words, ProComp (not best understood as “merit pay”) almost certainly is having a positive impact on student results in classrooms across Denver, though real world conditions make it very difficult to pin down the effects of one element when many reforms are taking place. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow summarized similar observations made from a 2010 ProComp evaluation in his issue paper Pioneering Teacher Compensation Reform. Of course, there’s not a magical direct line between having a system like ProComp in place and better student test results. Evaluators observed some improvements in instructional practices, and as was noted in the Ed […]

Yesterday I let you know about Education Policy Center director Pam Benigno’s published response to Colorado’s K-12 controversy of the month concerning online education programs. One of the great aspects of her piece was the focus on effective student-centered policy solutions. She directly suggested changes to how students are counted and funded — whether a student spends all, some or none of their course time online. To keep the conversation moving forward about ways for Colorado to improve, I recommend the Nation’s Digital Learning Report Card, a new and one-of-a-kind web tool to grade states on how well they’re doing putting into place the Ten Elements of High-Quality Digital Learning. The Report Card allows the feature of clicking on individual states for a breakdown of their scores, including comparisons with up to two other states.

Yesterday I told you that effective education reform might be ready to give Iowa a try. A major piece of the plan proposed by Gov. Terry Branstad and education department leader Jason Glass is to end social promotion for 3rd graders who can’t read. Well, my timing as usual is golden, since key Colorado education leaders yesterday gave serious discussion to moving the very same reform issue forward. Ed News Colorado reports: The anxiety level in the room rose quickly after Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs and chair of the House Education Committee, briefed the group on his idea for a bill that would hold back third-graders who are the furthest behind in literacy. [link added] About five years ago my Education Policy Center friends hosted an event with a couple experts who explained some major reasons behind Colorado’s “reading crisis.” Not all kids will be reading as well at the 3rd grade as I am, unfortunately. Let’s hope the issue of teacher training doesn’t get overlooked in this policy discussion. Not surprisingly, though, the idea to end social promotion already has opposition:

Last week I pointed you to a provocative new Rick Hess essay that asked whether education reform has paid too much attention to focusing on urban, high-poverty areas and on closing achievement gaps. Well, almost as if on cue, Jay Greene and Josh McGee write in Education Next about their new study on how suburban U.S. school districts compare internationally in math (based on most recent 2007 data): Affluent suburban districts may be outperforming their large urban neighbors, but they fail to achieve near the top of international comparisons…. White Plains, New York, in suburban Westchester County, is only at the 39th percentile in math relative to our global comparison group. Grosse Point, Michigan, outside of Detroit, is at the 56th percentile. Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University outside of Chicago, is at the 48th percentile in math. The average student in Montgomery County, Maryland, where many of the national government leaders send their children to school, is at the 50th percentile in math relative to students in other developed countries…. It goes on, but you get the flavor. If you’re wondering about your own school district, you can check out the handy new web tool Greene and company […]

What’s going on in the world of education reform? Every once in awhile, even a precocious 5-year-old like myself can benefit from stepping back to try to get a better look at the big picture. With a penetrating eye and a nuanced approach, the prolific Rick Hess takes on one of K-12 reformers’ sacred cows–the focus on the achievement gap: …The legacy of achievement gap mania isn’t necessarily undesirable. Focusing on the neediest students is admirable, as far as it goes. With limited time, talent, and resources, we can’t do everything–and it’s not unreasonable that some think our priority in every case should be the most in need. The real problem has been the unwillingness of gap-closers to acknowledge the costs of their agenda or its implications. And yet, the groupthink consensus that the business of education is “closing achievement gaps” has made it tough to talk honestly about the costs–for fear of being branded a racist or thought unconcerned with inequities. It has dreadfully narrowed the potential coalition for reform. It has distorted the way we’ve approached educational choice, accountability, and reform. It has warped and retarded the pace, reach, and power of school improvement efforts. And it has […]

How about a little “dog bites man” story for education policy geeks? Hey, you can’t drive the point home often enough when you’re making the case for education transformation! A new issue brief for the Manhattan Institute by Marcus Winters (now one of Colorado’s own) highlights the unsurprising but important research he conducted along with Jay Greene and Bruce Dixon: Our study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Economics of Education Review, builds on two decades of research from a variety of school systems and confirms a consistent finding: external teacher credentials tell us next to nothing about how well a teacher will perform in the classroom…. As with most previous research, we found no relationship between a teacher’s earning a master’s degree, certification, or years of experience and the teacher’s classroom performance as measured by student test scores….

Little Eddie is busy beating the heat, so no long, clever and insightful entries for today. In the meantime, chalk another one up for the positive effects of school choice. Matt Ladner points us to a new study on one of the nation’s major education tax credit programs: A careful analysis of test score gains by David Figlio of Northwestern University has found a modest but statistically significant gains for Florida tax credit students. The data in this study are messy, and Dr. Figlio admirably goes about sorting through the various issues in an even-handed fashion.